Comfort and Chaos
by ZoeWarren
Summary: Aurora craved physical contact like an addict, he had learned, and it was something he offered to her freely. His heart ached to realize, though, she wasn't sure here how to ask him for what she needed.


The night after Frank Faber visited the safe house, the night after Tom died, no one slept. Tense negotiations with Faber, endless messages back and forth with Sinclair, and a hurried relocation to a new camp in the woods – just in case – filled the short hours of darkness. And once the sun came up, there was just so much to do. Alfred found it was easier to just keep going, grateful almost for both the business and the weariness that numbed his thoughts, numbed his grief.

But when, at the end of that second day, after a silent supper with the team, he staggered, finally, to his small one-man tent and collapsed onto his blankets, he couldn't sleep. Exhaustion dragged at his limbs, wrung out by too many hours on too much adrenaline, but even so his restless mind wouldn't settle. Couldn't. No distractions now, and so many plans, so many fears, so many griefs all jumbled together, vying for his attention, driving his pulse in a pounding worry. And beneath it all, the dread that when he did succumb to his exhaustion, the plans and fears and griefs would just follow after him, shaped into nightmares by his perfect memory, by Neil's description of Tom's fall.

The footsteps, when they came, advancing carefully in the darkness, were almost a welcome distraction.

Alfred reached for his gun, fought his aching body up to a crouch – just in case – and listened. The footsteps shuffled directly towards his tent, quiet but not furtive, the flavour all wrong for an intruder. And in the split second before the flap was pulled open, he lowered his weapon, knew who it must be.

The night threw just enough moonlight to silhouette Aurora, crouched in the low entrance, fabric of the tent flap crumpled in her grip. She met his eyes briefly before her gaze flickered away again, taking in the gun. Without asking, without speaking, she rolled forward onto her knees and crawled inside, letting the flap fall closed behind her. Alfred shifted over to make room, but waited in silence to see what she would do.

Aurora simply stretched out on the ground next to him and curled onto her right side facing away from him. Alfred stared down at her, uncertain. Their kiss in the safe house had changed all the rules between them in a way he didn't yet understand, and this was an entirely new development. They had never shared sleeping arrangements quite like this before, but Alfred found he didn't mind the idea. He didn't particularly want to be alone in the dark tonight either.

He tucked his gun away and lay back down against the thin pillow, head rolled to his right to watch her. She didn't move, didn't speak, but she held herself still, too tense for sleep. And the longer he watched, the more wrong it felt.

The rigid lines of her body resonated in dissonant chords, and the ragged edge to her breathing left an ugly yellow-green taste in his mouth. Aurora usually sounded in flavours of gold – sometimes the bright gold of a necklace nestled in dark velvet, sometimes the warm gold of a late October afternoon, and sometimes the cold, hard gold of a miser's fortune. The greenish tinge was always worrying.

Awkward in the small space, he turned onto his right side, put out his hand to brush her shoulder. The bruise-green hitch in her breath, the wet trembling in the muscles under his fingers... and he understood. Aurora craved physical contact like an addict, he had learned, and it was something he offered to her freely. His heart ached to realize, though, she wasn't sure here how to ask him for what she needed.

He gripped her arm, firm and comforting, and inched his body closer in behind hers. Closer, but still not touching. And, as though his movement, his willingness, had been the permission she'd been waiting for, Aurora shifted on the blankets, pressed backwards against him, closing the gap.

Waves of color, a whole orchestra of sound rolled out from the points where their bodies met, overwhelming in their intensity but for once not frightening. This was music he would happily drown in. He shifted his hand to her waist so he could pull her more firmly against him, tucked his knees in behind hers so the whole length of their bodies pressed together in comfort. He wasn't much bigger, physically, than she was, but she felt so tiny in this moment that he seemed to wrap all the way around her – she nothing but a pained knot at his centre.

Aurora found his hand on her waist with both of hers, twined their fingers together, and tucked their joined hands up against her chest. Her heart thundered there with the same turbulence as his own, and somehow the rhythm of it under his fingers made perfect sense alongside the chaos of sound in his head. She gripped his hands, snugged back against his chest, and, finally, blew a long shaky breath out between her lips.

She was the one who had taught him the power of human touch, the casual gesture that held a wealth of comfort, and it was a lesson he had taken to heart. She was free with touch in a way she wasn't in any other form of interaction. Sometimes, he was sure, she wasn't even aware she was doing it.

No one had ever touched Alfred in that way before, and his first experience of it was electric. A sizzle of blue and the smell of home burst through him from just the brief warmth of a human hand. And from that first day when she gripped his arm in passing, he couldn't stop himself from reaching for more.

He learned from her with the same speed he learned everything else and mirrored back the physical contact she modeled for him. He wasn't sure Aurora even realized the way she turned into it at first. It was instinctual, like leaves turning into the sun.

That touch, that turning, had built the bridge between them, and he found himself powerfully grateful for it now as slowly, cocooned in his arms, she began to calm. The green leached from the taste of her breathing, the rigid eased from her shoulders. He tucked his face into the crook of her neck, surrendering completely to the colour and the music, and the last of the tension went out of her in a shuddering rush of golden breath.

Suspended in this fragile peace, E-flat blue ghosted out from their tangled fingers to fill the small tent, and Alfred allowed himself a moment to revel in the smell of home and safety tying the maelstrom inside him together. For now, there was nothing in the world beyond her, her smell, her colour, her taste. No combination of fears or plans or griefs could possibly breach that wall. The pounding in his heart eased in time with the calming of hers beneath his fingers, and together they tumbled into impossible sleep.

** **

He woke from a dreamless night as she wriggled free of his hold shortly before dawn. Bereft, he had to fight the urge to reach after her, to pull her back. She slipped out of the tent as silently as she had arrived, and took a world of colour and warmth with her.

But her edges weren't as dissonant, and her breathing was a muted brass with only a hint of green.

By the time they met again over breakfast, she was once again larger than life, her armour bolted firmly in place. But the smile she found for him tinged her eyes in E-flat blue.

** **

That night, as their small group broke up for bedtime, she bid him goodnight and headed for her tent. Alone in his own, he lay awake again, now with a whole new layer of worry and confusion added to the morass.

But once the camp settled into silence, once Harry had put the radio away and Neil had bedded down for the night, he heard again the shuffle of footsteps in the darkness.

When she pushed back the flap, he simply lifted the blanket in invitation, and she crawled in, tucked right up against him. He brought blanket and arm down together, bundling both snugly around her.

She was her own size tonight, another body not much smaller than his own. They fit together a little differently, and sleep was slower to come. But safety lay in the silence between them. Plans and fears and griefs were for daytime, for outside. Together, in the small tent, they could fill the air with E-flat blue and find just a few hours of comfort.

Aurora dropped off before he did, her body growing loose and heavy against his. He held himself awake a little longer just to savour the feel of it.

He'd never been this close to another human being, never been held the way that Aurora now cradled his arm against her body, even in sleep, pinning herself tight against his chest. And it was still unbelievable to him that he could find comfort and peace in such a riot of sensation. The collision of colour and flavour and sound washed through him in wave after wave, new and soothing and electrifying and safe and _Aurora_. Aurora most of all.

He knew what came next – not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. He wasn't a child. But it wasn't something he had ever imagined he would experience himself. How could he possibly? How could he? But if it felt like this, with her... For the first time the thought of it wasn't twisted by fear. For the first time he thought he might want to.

Not tonight. Tonight was for quiet and for safety and for sleep. Not tonight, but maybe... maybe a little sooner than eventually.

Again he pressed his face into the loose curls at her neck, hiding this time from his joy and from his guilt. Time enough to face those in the daylight. He sucked in a deep breath, filled himself again with the taste of her, the feel of her. The waves of her presence washed through him in all their chaos, and he surrendered, finally, to sleep, following her down into gold and love and E-flat blue.


End file.
